To blog or not to blog?
First off, blogging is not about technology or even about publishing.
It is, however, about connection and conversation.
Relationships are built between people and brands are products of conversation - just because your company doesn’t blog doesn’t necessarily mean your brand is not present in the blogosphere , it just means you don’t control the voice.
Branding is now about managing complexity. The ways and speed with which information and content is discovered, processed and shared has changed dramatically.
And if you don’t start defining your brand within this context, pretty soon someone else will.
This is why, as a brand, you must plan plan for content you don’t create and how you are going to respond when that happens.
Now, more than ever, it’s the time to be looking at fully engaging in a meaningful dialogue and relationship with your customers (and employees) with real-time interaction, involvement and also collaboration.
In short, joining the conversation.
Your customers and employees are worried about how the economic downturn is going to affect them and they are already talking about it, online, amongst themselves.
Authoring your own blog, and contributing to others is a way to establish and maintain open channel of communication between you and them. People want relationships to be with other people, not corporate communications and all over people are craving real human interaction.
That means a real, authentic voice. It’s not an advertising channel.
It’s worth heeding the advice of prominent blogger, Hugh Macleod.
‘If you talked to people the way advertising does, you’d get a punch in the face’
MDs , CEOs, Marketing Directors: you have something to offer that is ultimately compelling to your customers - access.
Also, make it your business to get to know other thought leaders in your industry, and have a dialogue with them.
Be authentic, transparent - and most importantly, human - and you’ll reap the benefits long after this recession has gone.
Surely it’s better to be at the centre of the conversation about your brand that on the outside looking in?
If compliance gets in the way of that, you’ve already lost.
Eaon Pritchard, Head of Digital – Geronimo
Becky in Brand Republic
Becky has had an opinion piece featured on Brand Republic this week.
She discusses techniques brands use to reach a female audience.
Here’s an excerpt:
‘Everyone understands that a key driver for women throughout all aspects of their life is talk — talking to friends about feelings, to colleagues and clients about projects and aspirations, with suppliers about the market and innovations. It is a female trait to gather as much information, from as many sources as possible, to use in making decisions.’
Read the full article here
Jonathan Barnbrook at Typographic Circle
Jonathan Barnbrook; Typographic Circle, JWT, Knightsbridge - 23/10/08
Last night we went to hear a talk for the Typographic Circle by British graphic designer and typographer Jonathan Barnbrook, which took place at the offices of JWT in salubrious Knightsbridge. As you may or may not know, Barnbrook has designed several fonts, usually giving them provocative, ‘playful’ names such as Manson (shortened to Mason by Emigre after complaints in the US) and Bastard.
The talk, like the work, was peppered with humour, and made for an entertaining hour or so. Of particular fascination for myself, who is often labelled a geek for messing around with the worldwide web, was the detail, thought and craft that went into many of the fonts he has created. Barnbrook talked the audience through the various processes and source material involved in creating such classics as Shock and Awe - apparently much-loved by games developers - and Infidel. From this, we were talked through his design for the Damien Hirst monograph and how he came to work with David Bowie (on his Heathen release). My favourite observation was that “Hirst wants to be Bowie, and Bowie wants to be Hirst” (Hirst introduced Barmbrook to Bowie), although I didn’t feel that this flaunting of his status as ‘designer to the stars’ sat well with his ‘man of the people’ politics / credentials.
The final pieces shown covered his work in corporate identity - for Roppongi Hills, the largest post war development in Tokyo and a Japanese funeral director called Dignity, as well as for Adbusters and the exhibition in South Korea of political design work , Tomorrow’s Truths.
Provocation and challenge run throughout Barnbrook’s work, and much of his work deals with the thorny issue of corporate culture and identity. He tells of having turned down working for both Nike and Coca Cola (on more than one occasion) and asserts that, despite what people may think, he and his 4 person studio are not making huge amounts of money, and that he is happy that way. Certainly, for me, his work treads an uneasy line between advertising and propaganda, and demonstrates interesting parallels between the two.
But the highlight, for me, was his animation for a Radio Scotland series, entitled Foggie Bummer. This was generated by letrasetting directly on found footage, and illustrates a conversation between two men discussing the Scottish dialect phrase ‘Foggie Bummer’. A beautiful piece which brought the typography to life and added yet another dimension to the talk and work.
Richard Gallon
Senior Interactive Designer
are ‘rewards’ the new ‘free’?
I must admit this slipped past my radar until recently.
Nectar, the UK supermarket loyalty card sceme, now gives you music ‘free’ as rewards.
Like perks as the new ‘free’…or what trendwatching call perkonomics.
‘A new breed of perks and privileges, added to brands’ regular offerings, is satisfying consumers’ ever-growing desire for novel forms of status and/or convenience, across all industries. The benefits for brands are equally promising: from escaping commoditization, to showing empathy in turbulent times.’
For certain artists and genres the ‘perk’ model suits better than the ‘free’ model of radiohead, prince et al.
The music is free but manages to retain it’s ‘value’ in what could be described as a slightly jaded market of free everything (ie where free just means ‘worthless’).
And i’m still trying to work out where this sits in Chris Andersons ‘four kinds of free‘.
For added value, fans who downloaded Dido’s free track ‘Look No Further’ are entered into a prize draw to win a VIP trip with 4 nights accomm to a playback of her new album in NYC.
Eaon Pritchard, Head of Digital
if it’s good enough for No. 10…
Reuters hosted a speech on the economy by Gordon Brown this week and opened up the event to the new web with the help of two prominent uk social media types Documentally and Sizemore.
The event video was streamed live to the web using a mobile phone using qik while the the commentary ran alongside on other platforms, notably twitter.
In fact, to be fair, the twit-o-sphere was atweet with anticipation most of the weekend as rumours of a major coup for social media-dom on the Monday to follow began to circulate.
Reuters have summarised the event over here.
I’ll just add that if the government - of all people! - is opening up to social media, and has the confidence - especially in these tough times - to relinquish ‘control’ of its brand to its ‘customers’ and embrace ‘new’ media, that should be inspiration to all of us to take up the challenge of experimentation.
Eaon Pritchard, Head of Digital